Programme Specification

1. General Information

Programme title: Animation

Award: Masters
Qualification Framework level: Level 7
School/Department or equivalent: School of Communication
Campus location(s): White City
Total UK credits: 180
Date valid from/to: 2024-25

2. Programme Philosophy

The MA Animation programme at the Royal College of Art has a world-class reputation for artistic,
director-led creative practice and innovative risk-taking and our students also explore the
increasingly porous borders between animation, virtual reality, augmented reality, or new media
art. The programme maintains an ethos and environment of experimentation and creativity built on
a foundation of social and cultural interrogation and contextual and critical thinking.

We are committed to creating an environment where a critical potency of animation can challenge
and offer alternatives to the industry's dominant digital realism and inherent ideologies. We offer
you a singular approach to a community of learning and teaching for developing your creativity and
skills to negotiate rapid cultural and technological change. Within a continuum of mimetic narrative
and playful abstraction, you will find your own meaningful fit or stance as an artist within an array
of techniques, concepts and canons to position you to contribute to a greater collective intellectual
and creative capital.

The programme is dynamically responsive to how animation is now central to contemporary

debates in visual culture. Animation is a pervasive, and persuasive, interdisciplinary moving image
form that extends across a global landscape of technologies, cultures and media and
human/nonhuman relationships. We engage in animation's gaining proximity to contemporary
discourses on aesthetics, socio- and ecopolitics, consumption and techno-cultural progression in
the arts, sciences, health, and commerce. As a programme situated in the School of
Communication, we are committed to our students’ development in and expansion of this new
visual communication paradigm into these and other fields, and to their potential to influence
intellectual, artistic, political, and cultural agendas, that in turn can transform our daily lives. As
screen access increases globally, and with this the animation that can be watched on them, so too
do opportunities to create meaningful works in social contexts to affect change, improve
knowledge, redistribute power and build communities and participatory cultures.

Structured around practice-as-research, experimentation and constructive critique, the curriculum

has a discursive approach and a particular emphasis on developing creative time-based content
informed by collaboration, questioning, exchange and process exploration. Supported on your
journey by a world-class programme team and state of the art facilities, you are enabled to explore

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enduring historical relations with the material-based media of painting, drawing, illustration, and
sculpture – the ‘stuff’ of animation practice – that are enhanced by digital tools and deep learning
processes as well as refinements in sound, display practices and film language. We engage with
many screen-based and related forms you may want to explore, from installations, projection
mapping, VR and AR, extra-cinematic animation and theatre environments, to sci-tech
visualisation tools and the spatial politics of citizen science games or apps. You will grasp the
opportunities arising from animation’s increasing pervasiveness and hone your influence on how
your audiences see and understand the worlds and experiences you create. Together with your
peers and students from other programmes, you will experience a collaborative professional
environment and community of practice that is equitable, encouraging, convivial, challenging and
confidence-building.

You will be challenged and encouraged to engage in innovative practice-oriented research sensitive
to understanding and articulation of the nuances of cultures, ethics, diversity, identities, traditions,
environments and futures. Our students engage in many interdisciplinary contexts, from drama,
literature, philosophy, fine and applied arts, to film and media theory, art history, STEM disciplines,
architecture and more. You will deepen your understanding of animation to develop your own
critical approach to your practice, and challenge yourself intellectually with new ideas to broaden
and influence social, political, and cultural perspectives through creative engagement. MA
Animation is pedagogically conceived and strategically positioned to foster our students’
aspirations and creative transformations as ethically minded thinkers and professionally astute
creative artists, filmmakers and problem solvers. You will join a community engaged in dialogues
with and new perspectives on the persuasive potential of animation in the digital humanities and
STEAM disciplines.

The programme has three terms with a combination of programme, School and College units that
seek to enable you to build a clear sense of communication methods, practices and contexts in
relation to your own work.

In Term 1, you will undertake a programme unit of Animation Forms, Methods & Contexts which
enhances your knowledge and disciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise in key critical contexts
and a range of practices and research methods and approaches within animation moving image
practices.

Across terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA. This unit aims to support you to meet the
challenges of a complex, uncertain and changing world by bringing you together to work
collaboratively in cross-programme interdisciplinary teams. In your team you will develop a self-
initiated themed project, informed by expertise within and beyond the College. These projects will
challenge you to collectively use your intellect and imagination to address key cultural, social,
environmental and economic challenges. In doing so, you will develop and reflect on the abilities
required to translate knowledge into action, and help demonstrate the contribution that the
creative arts can make to our understanding and experience of the world.

In Term 2, the Making Worlds with Others School-wide unit will allow you to work alongside
students within and across the School. Working from the perspective of your individual practices
and disciplines, you will develop a project that engages with others and/or creates mutual
exchanges of ideas and understandings, with the intention to create critically engaged situations
and/or outcomes resulting in convivial knowledge exchange. Through collaborative learning and
making the unit will support you in understanding knowledge exchange and public engagement and
how you are to situate your own practice in these territories. The unit will also ask you to question
how socially engaged practice can contribute to cultural understanding, co-researching and co-
creating methods for knowing with, not knowing about.

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In Term 3 you will apply what you have learned in your engagement in the production of your
Independent Research Project which will be completed as a self-determined body of work
negotiated in collaboration with academic and technical staff.

3. Educational Aims and Outcomes of the Programme

Programme aims

The MA Animation Programme aims to:

● Offer you the Programme’s dynamic approach to research, learning and teaching for
developing creativity, skills and strategies to negotiate rapid cultural and technological
change;
● Create an ethos and environment of experimentation and creative practice built on a
foundation of community, collaboration, social and cultural interrogation, and contextual
and critical thinking;
● Support your agency in developing fundamental research, interpersonal and presentation
skills and expanded discipline expertise;
● Facilitate your engagement in dealing imaginatively and sensitively with contemporary
social, environmental, political and/or cultural issues using different technologies,
innovative practice and creative media;
● Encourage you to experiment to challenge the boundaries of traditional animation and
moving image in your practice in process, aesthetic expression and variation on
(non)narrative forms;
● Enable you to engage with aesthetic and conceptual research contexts, societies, ethics,
cultures, identities, traditions and human/non-human relationships with your peers and in
relation to your work;
● Enhance your creative and transformative journeys to be ethically minded thinkers and
creative artists, filmmakers and problem solvers;
● Support you to situate your work, define your ambitions and identify challenges to prepare
you for professional practice after graduation.

What will I be expected to achieve?

Upon successful completion of the programme, you will be expected to meet the
requirements of both the College-wide Learning Outcomes and your programme-specific
Learning Outcomes.

College-Wide Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this programme, you will be able to:
● Interrogate and articulate the intentions of your work in relation to the critical and
conceptual context of your field(s) of study;
● Independently plan and produce work that is informed by developments at the forefront of
your field(s) of study;
● Evaluate and critique the principles and methods of research in your field(s) of study, and
apply these principles to your creative, professional and/or scholarly practice;
● Demonstrate originality in how you translate knowledge into practice;
● Communicate your creative, professional and/or scholarly practice to a non-specialist
audience;

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 ● Critically reflect on the likely public impact of your creative, professional and/or scholarly
practice, and on your responsibilities as a practitioner;
● Define your professional ambitions and identify the challenges involved in meeting them.

Programme-Specific Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this programme, you will be able to:
● Examine, document and apply research-focused approaches and methods in order to
translate ideas and primary research into individual or collaborative moving image practice;
● Demonstrate originality, creativity and experimentation in the use of materials, processes,
technologies and environments;
● Interrogate, integrate and adapt primary and secondary research on aesthetic, historical
and critical perspectives to articulate the intentions of your moving image work and
production of your creative practice in visual and verbal presentations;
● Develop, design, and document a detailed and feasible project and production plan to
professional standards for your independent research project;
● Engage in and contribute to the support and enabling of others in critical discussions and
feedback with your peers and staff, and where relevant show thoughtful participation
and/or leadership in collaboration and working with others;
● Evidence and assess how you select, evaluate and critique research contexts, societies,
cultures, ethics, identities, traditions and human/non-human relationships as appropriate
with your peers in relation to your independent research project;
● Focus and apply your deep learning skills, technical competencies, systematic production
methods and self-directed planning to produce original animated moving image work with
sound at an advanced level that integrates criticality, creativity and technique.

4. What will I learn?

Curriculum Map

Programme Structure

Term 1 Term 2 Term 3

Making Worlds with Others

Animation Forms, (15 credits)
Methods and Contexts
(45 credits) Critical Non/Fiction and Independent Research
Experimental/Expanded Project
Practices (60 credits)
(30 credits)

AcrossRCA (30 credits)

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Programme Structure

Unit Title Term Credit Value

Animation Forms, Methods and Contexts 1 45
AcrossRCA (College-Wide Unit) 1&2 30
Making Worlds with Others (School-Wide Unit) 2 15
Critical Non/Fiction and Experimental/Expanded 2 30
Practices
Independent Research Project 3 60

Please note, there are three Independent Study weeks included in your programme (one per
term). During these weeks there will be no scheduled teaching or assessment, and limited access
to Technical Services. Self-service will be available for inducted users, and you may independently
use computing and technology zones, bench spaces, and the resources store and art shop. These
weeks are intended for you to work independently, and technical supervision, fabrication support,
or supervision of high-risk activities will not be available.

Animation Forms, Methods and Contexts starts with creative community-building activities
followed by practice-as-research exploratory workshops as ‘serious play’ to develop skills
refinement and knowledge development through collaborative and individual projects. Your sound
and image skills are expanded on through technical Inductions, Workshops and meetings with
technical staff. You are expected to engage in collaboration, experimentation and conceptual
thinking, and to develop sensitivity to the subjects represented. In tandem with the workshops,
Articulation Lectures provide encounters with aesthetic, historical, contemporary and formal
contexts of interdisciplinary animation theory and practices. In the Critical Explorations Group
seminars you will consider, investigate and discuss a range of approaches to image, sound and
text-based materials across animation and its many related creative and intellectual fields to
explore rationales, criteria and creative methodologies. You will document and evidence these in
your Virtual Studio Desk.

In Critical Non/Fiction and Experimental/Expanded Practices, over Term 2 you begin working
on intellectual development and refinement for your Independent Research Project supported by
academic and technical staff. The Critical Intensives is a series of interdisciplinary groups
notionally named: Non/Fiction and Experimental/Expanded, in which you generate, present and
share project-specific research methods for and approaches to your negotiated independent
research project agreed with your tutors. This also involves selecting, evaluating and critiquing
research contexts, societies, cultures, identities, traditions and human/non-human relationships
as appropriate with your peers. The term is research-intensive, and includes developing a detailed
production plan. Group and individual tutorials and a critique provide opportunities to receive
feedback, as well as an assessed Project Proposal and Production Plan. You will further refine your
skills in technical services workshops and self-arranged meetings with technical staff to develop
your Technical Plan.

Term 3 is when you create and complete your Independent Research Project (IRP). You are
expected to work independently whilst setting your own aims, objectives, contexts and deadlines.
The IRP is a programme of self-directed independent study that is supported by subject-based
group and personal tutorials and technical tutorials, studio dialogue and student-led events. During
the term, you are expected to realise these ambitions in a sustained and reflective process of
‘thinking through making’ and develop a body of work evidencing your rationale and priorities as a
critical, creative practitioner. Your final body of work should evidence a considered process of
selecting, testing and making use of appropriate materials and technical processes sound and
image for screen-based and/or expanded moving image practice. This work will then be

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contextually curated and prepared for presentation in a public-facing event at the end of Term 3.
The Unit includes Professional Practice curriculum and events to prepare and equip you for your
future after graduation.

5. How will I learn?

In the first two terms of the programme, you will engage in a range of tutor-led curricula and group
and individual projects to underpin and stimulate the evolution of your intellectual, technical and
professional creative journey. The programme encourages a practice-as-research focused, learner-
centred approach, and you participate with your cohort in collectively determining enhancements
and specific areas of focus that are responsive to emergent areas of practice and knowledge. The
third term has an emphasis on self-directed study where you apply your knowledge and technical
skills and refinements to complete your final project.

Technical Services

The College’s Technical Services provides instruction in and access to working across a diverse
range of materials-based and digital media in state-of-the-art facilities on three campuses. In the
first Term, Orientation sessions offer students an overview of technical services and how to access
them. Inductions are activities with studio technicians that enable students to use technical
facilities safely and, when appropriate, without supervision. In Terms 1 and 2, you can access
College-wide Technical Skills Workshops that are available across a range of analogue and
contemporary digital creative practices. You are expected to take a proactive role in accessing the
Technical Services offer. Some may be scheduled via academic staff for group support on specific
projects, or you choose a self-selected workshop focussing on a particular process or skill, or
student initiated. Negotiated Technical Learning offers one-to-one or small group instruction that
you arrange by appointment to support a specific piece of work.

Briefings

Briefings are sessions that present key information to students on the programme, project briefs or
assessments.

Workshops

Programme Workshops are provided in various forms. Core workshops offer an intensive
collaborative learning experience focused on a particular subject, creative approach, methodology or
technique. Typically, in the first term, a series of stimulating project-based workshops help you
sharpen your skills and knowledge development in time-based image and sound, conceptual
development and experimental practice. They help you challenge the boundaries of traditional
animation and moving image in your practice by taking risks in your own process, aesthetic
expression, and variation on (non-)narrative forms.

Seminars and Lectures

The Articulation Lectures are a series on historical and contemporary discourses and subjects as
well as interdisciplinary approaches to expanded critical contexts and history, theory, ethics and
aesthetics of animation and related fields. These are enhanced by reading lists, include film
screenings and will be complimented by student-led discussions. Specialist Seminars and
Lectures provide expertise on a range of practice, production skills and contextual themes in which
staff artists and professionals present their work and give insights into their critical positions,
techniques, and creative processes. A series of Professional Practice sessions supports you and

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prepares you for transition into life after graduation.

Groups

You will engage in student-informed Groups in which you engage in constructive reflection and
discussion with tutors and peers on your own and others' work. They work with a student-led
teaching strategy to develop a greater capacity for critical, constrictive, and independent thought. In
Term 1 Critical Explorations Groups are contextually themed, often in tandem with the Articulation
Lectures and Serious Play workshops, and building on these in Term 2, Critical Intensives Groups
and the Critical Intensives Forum are specific to developing your chosen area of research and
practice. A key feature in Term 2 is group discussion to arrive at agreed terms of engagement: this
plays a significant role for students in creating a platform that is empowering and community-
building. It allows you to analyse and develop your approaches to and responsibilities in your
practice in relation to each other, to other disciplines, and to cultural and representational issues
and structures.

Production Research Methods Groups take the form of production meetings which provide
students with methods, skills and tools to develop production planning for their IRP. These also
support students plan production in the coming months in terms of time management and
organisation, and to help them in their future professional creative life.

Tutorials

Personal Tutorials are scheduled with your Personal Tutor, who offer advice and engage in
discussion with you to foster, support and challenge your development and ensure you are on track
with your aims and ambitions in your programme. It is important that you are prepared for your
tutorials and take a proactive role. It is good practice to make a list of points before each tutorial for
a critical self-reflection of progress and any challenges or issues you are facing.

Group Tutorials are timetabled at key points throughout the year, encouraging discussion and peer
review in a small group setting.

Specialist Tutorials with creative practitioners are one-to-one or group tutorials with a range of
animation tutors and specialist professionals.

Critiques

Formative critiques and peer feedback enhance your development of fundamental research,
interpersonal and presentation skills and expanded discipline expertise. Tutor Critiques facilitate
tutor feedback for your projects in development. Peer Critiques are self-organised by cohorts and
offer an informal setting in which students can present research and work-in-progress to peers for
support and discussion. You are expected to take an active role in providing feedback to your fellow
students in both of these.

Virtual Studio Desk

In the flexibility of blended learning, you work with online platforms to create your own bespoke
digital Virtual Studio Desk to document, collate and curate your primary and secondary research
processes and to present your work. It is shared with tutors and your peers to facilitate exchange
and feedback on your work in progress, and a resource for you to prepare for assessments.

Offsite Study: Field Trip

Organised Field Trips may be led or organised by tutors which enable you to engage with diverse
methodologies, or works of other artists and with elements of professional practice.
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Presentations

Presentations are verbally commented presentations of visual and sound-based work that
demonstrate fulfilment of Unit/programme learning outcomes.

Independent study

You are expected to engage in all three terms in significant independent research study and
practical work that may be collaborative or individual, supported by academic staff and staff and
resources available to you from the Information, Library and Technical Services Department.

Feedback

Formative feedback will take place through presentations, tutor critiques and tutorials. These allow
you to critically reflect on your work in progress with your tutors and peers, and to decide on areas
for improvement or further study. This will enable your performance and progress to be understood
and accounted for through a wide variety of academic contact points, recognising that you are able
to perform in different ways and through different means and aspects of the curriculum while still
achieving the requisite performance standards.

In Person, Online, Blended and Flipped Learning

The programme works with a variety of in-person and online teaching, research and learning and
community-building methods. This student-oriented, active learning and formative feedback
supports conceptual development through a combination of taught sessions, individual study and
group and peer working. Specific elements of the curriculum may be delivered online and may
include seminars, presentations, tutorials and meetings. In sessions working with flipped learning,
materials are provided in advance to facilitate deep and focused discussion with tutors.

Professional Practice

Throughout your studies you will have opportunities to develop your production and professional
practice skills. At the end of your studies, you will be supported in the curation and public
presentation of your Independent Research Project. To enhance your professional life upon
graduation, studio visits, meetings, discussions and feedback sessions may be arranged with
industry professionals, heads of studios, and producers.

6. Assessment and feedback

Regulations

Regulations for assessment and progression can be found here. Please note that College regulations
are subject to annual updates and amendments.

Unit assessment

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The programme embraces a holistic set of approaches to assessment of the unit learning outcomes
that includes your self-reflective self-assessment, and formative, continuous and summative
assessment with peers and tutors. This both ensures the quality and standards of your award, and
considers the different learning journeys of each student. You need to successfully pass the units in
the first two terms to progress to the final term.

In term 1, Animation Forms, Methods and Contexts is assessed in part through a process of
continuous assessment as you progress in your exploration and experimentation in curricular
projects during the term. A unit assessment will review your critical contexts and a set of creative
practice elements you choose to present that demonstrate the unit learning outcomes. This typically
includes workshop results, Critical Explorations, and Virtual Studio Desk.

In term 2, Critical Non/Fiction and Experimental/Expanded Practices is assessed in part through

a process of continuous assessment of the Critical Intensives and a further point of assessment
during the term, of the Project Proposal Presentation.

During Term 3, the Independent Research Project is assessed. You will submit a Statement of
Outcome in advance, in which you reflect on your work and its contextual, critical and creative
development. You should discuss your plans for assessment with your Personal Tutor and prepare a
presentation supported with visual, text and moving image/sound elements of your final project. In
the final assessment, presentation of the IRP and a discursive oral examination evaluates your
performance against the unit learning outcomes.

More information regarding individual assessments will be included in the unit descriptors, and will
be available to you at the beginning of the academic year.

7. What award can I get?

To be awarded an RCA MA degree you need to gain 180 credits at level 7 of the Framework
for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ). This will involve successfully completing all
units.
If you do not pass a unit at the first attempt, you may be offered an opportunity to resit the unit. If
you are successful at resit you will be awarded the credits for that unit. If you are unsuccessful, you
cannot progress further in your programme.

Exit awards:
If you have gained at least 120 credits at level 7 of the FHEQ, you may be eligible for the exit award of
Postgraduate Diploma. An exit award is a final award from the College and cannot be rescinded.

For more detailed information about the College's assessment, progression and awards
policies see the Regulations.

8. Admissions

Cross-College requirements

Academic Entry Requirements

Candidates must normally have obtained a good relevant undergraduate degree or an equivalent

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qualification. The College recognises as an equivalent qualification any degree, diploma, certificate
or other evidence of formal qualification awarded by a university or other higher education
establishment where the award is made following the successful completion of a programme of at
least three years’ study, the programme of study being open, as a general rule, only to persons
holding a certificate awarded on the successful completion of a full programme of upper secondary
education.

Other qualifications may be approved, providing that the College’s Academic Board for Concessions
and Discipline (ABCD) is satisfied that the applicant has the ability to pursue the programme of
study successfully. The ABCD is empowered to make judgements about the extent to which
qualifications or experience gained elsewhere may be accepted in partial fulfilment of its
requirements.

Portfolio
All applicants are required to submit a portfolio as part of the application process. A portfolio is a
showcase of an applicant’s work as an artist or designer and can be made up of images, videos or
writing examples. The portfolio helps us to better understand the applicant and allows them to show
evidence of their ability and motivation to undertake a given programme.
Each programme is looking for different things in a portfolio; each Head of Programme provides
specific advice on portfolio requirements in the online application system. We advise prospective
students to consider these requirements carefully before submitting their application.

Applicant Qualities
Generally, we are looking for applicants to demonstrate their:

− creativity, imagination and innovation;

− ability to articulate the intentions of the work;

− intellectual engagement in areas relevant to the work;

− technical skills appropriate to the work;

− potential to benefit from the programme and achieve MA standards overall.

English Language

All programmes are taught and assessed in English, and a high level of English language proficiency
is required.

Applicants who are not a national of a majority English-speaking country will need to demonstrate
their English language proficiency. The College accepts a range of English language qualifications.
The full list can be seen at https://www.rca.ac.uk/studying-at-the-rca/apply/entrance-
requirements/english-language-requirements/

Applicants are exempt from this requirement if they have received a 2.1 degree or above from a
university in a majority English-speaking nation within the last two years.

Admission Process

Applications must be made directly to the College through our online application portal:
https://www.rca.ac.uk/studying-at-the-rca/apply/application-process/ma-application-process/
Upon completion of that first stage of the application process, candidates will be invited to submit a
portfolio of their work and a statement and/or video communicating clearly their motivations,

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personal interests and why they are pursuing a Masters degree at the Royal College of Art. These
materials are reviewed by members of the programme team who will communicate an academic
decision to the College Registry, who manage the process of offer-making in line with the College’s
recruitment targets. In some cases, where the programme team is not able to make an admission
decision based solely upon the work submitted by the applicant, we may invite the candidate to
undertake an interview with us.

Whilst there are still spaces available, successful candidates will be made an offer of a place. If there
is no vacancy for a subsequent successful applicant, the candidate will be placed on a waiting list,
and may be made a firm offer should a place become available.

Programme-specific requirements

Specific advice on programme portfolio requirements is provided by the Head of Programme in the
online application system. Please consult the College website for further information on programme-
specific admission and portfolio requirements:
https://www.rca.ac.uk/study/programme-finder/animation-ma/#requirements

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